Announcing Secrets of Augustine

We’ve been hinting about it for a while now, but today is the official launch of next years Ikkatsu project, The Secrets of Augustine. Here’s what we plan to accomplish in a nutshell; take the Alaska Marine Highway ferry from Bellingham Washington to Homer Alaska. From there we’ll be picked up my Eli Porter of Porter’s Wild Alaska, cross Cook Inlet over to Augustine Island which is home to Alaska’s most active volcano, Mt. Augustine.

We’ll circumnavigate the island, conducting our surveys for NOAA as usual, but we’ll be adding some additional science to our agenda this year. Annika Wallendahl, a professional geologist, will be joining our advisory team and we plan to spend some time on the summit of the volcano collecting samples for her. Also we’ve partnered with Oikonos Ecosystem Knowledge and will be doing field necropsy on any seabirds we find; we’ll be receiving training in their labs.

Documenting the tsunami debris is still high on our list, but after seeing the amount of plastic debris on our beaches, we’re hoping to educate the public about the crisis our oceans are facing. We’re already involved in some outreach programs with our local schools and hope to broaden that portion of mission as well.

However, the various costs of this project are going to be much more substantial then last years, and like many, we’re using indiegogo as a crowd funding source to cover the expense. Please consider a donation and help spread the word as well. This is a movie that needs to get made and we think we’re in a unique position to do so.

You can find more details both about the project and Kickstarter campaign here.

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Steve Weileman, wilderness guide, professional photographer, and award-winning filmmaker, continues to combine his passion for the outdoors and his creativity into filmmaking as well as making his unique set of skills available for commercial productions.
His work has been featured on CNN, National Geographic, and OutsideTV, as well as numerous local outlets.